Rohan's blog

The Internet gave too many choices. Is it a good thing?

Let’s take Netflix, for example. It’s a brilliant media company. You can buy a subscription for about $10 and access unlimited series, movies and documentaries. Although it’s not technically unlimited, it is, in a sense. At any given point, it will have 10,000 collections. And every week, they will release anywhere from 10 to 100 new titles. There is no way you will consume at a rate that you will consume all the content available on Netflix. Yet, the problem you face is what to watch next on Netflix?

Television had limited programming. And there was nothing you could do to choose. So, if they played a movie – you either watched it or not. You could switch to some different activity like reading. But if you were in the mood for watching a movie, you were stuck. But now that you have unlimited choices on Netflix, you face the same dilemma. You have nothing to watch. This translates to there is nothing good enough to watch. The process goes like this – you desire an action movie. You scroll, reading the plots and ratings. And then you fixate on something – but you think, what if there is something more amazing. So, you keep scrolling and scrolling. Adding many to the watchlist. When you are done with Netflix, you do the same with other streaming platforms and YouTube. And finally, after all the drama, you watch one random action movie. You could have watched that initially and saved yourself all the pain. You waste hours narrowing down on movies to don’t have to waste your time watching uninteresting movies.

An interesting hack here is to watch the first inclination. You are free to stop the movie, but you don’t come back ever. This way, you can invest watching 1 hour into watching the initial 5 minutes of every potential movie. And if a movie is good enough, it will hook you in the initial 5 minutes of the movie.

Too many choices often lead to confusion. Decision paralysis and the paradox of choice are some outcomes. You can’t decide, and the choices make you feel like you have no choices. The Internet has given us so many choices. There are thousands of news websites, millions of blogs and billions of videos. Where do you even start, and how do you choose. How you can be sure that you are making the right decision? There is no way to know for sure. That’s where the influencer comes in. Some people are passionate about specific things. For example, there is one person who loves China, and there is another who loves the Internet and so on. And there are many versions of it. For example, one might love smartphones and another only Apple smartphones. Choose your influencer and take their recommendations. Because they have done the hard work of going through the pile of many bad things. And you have to simply consume the best. If an influencer changes, choose another one and so on. For example, if I have to buy a tech product – I search for a review by Marques Brownlee or UrIndianConsumer and others. I trust the influencers, and they do the hard work for me. And this is where the future of the Internet lies.

Internet will keep on growing. And there will be lots of resources. The best way to navigate the Internet is to find people you admire. And follow their recommendations. And also, go on random pages sometimes. The best thing is to consume some of the recommendations and some purely random things. There is no way you can consume it all. But that’s not what you want to do anyway. You have to find your influencers and keep revising them as you grow.

For starters, here are some of my heroes,

Seth Godin – Marketing hero. Shares daily insights on life.
Ramit Sethi – Finance person. Shares unique wins with money.
James Clear – Habits Insights.
Nathan Barry – Creator Economy journey.
Noah Kagan – Become an entrepreneur.
Veritasium – Explainer science and Mathematics Videos.
Vsauce – Science, mathematics, philosophy and gaming videos.
Calisthenic Movement – Fitness at your home.
Ian Eastwood – See music via Dance.
Naval Ravikant – The best guy who knows everything.

And lots more… Share who is your hero. And I might add it to the list.